Love of the Pure Land. Light & Dust, #1

This is the love story of a twenty-seven-year-old woman and a Buddhist monk. Emily Carter is twenty-seven, single, and an expert at being fine. She has a routine: fix the office copier, answer emails she'll never finish, go home to her cramped apartment, and do it all again tomorrow. She makes spreadsheets about everything-including the feelings she doesn't know what to do with. Then she meets him.
Hikaru Sato is a monk-in-training at a small Buddhist temple on the Upper East Side. He's quiet in a way New Yorkers aren't. He looks at her like she's a person, not an errand. And when he says her name, it sounds like a different word entirely. What starts as curiosity becomes something neither of them expected-a connection that awakens feelings Hikaru has spent years learning to suppress. But when the pressure of his training, his family's expectations, and the depth of his own heart collide, he doesn't just break.
He shatters. His consciousness fragments into three separate realms-fear, regret, and desire-each one a world built from the pieces of him. His body lies motionless in the temple. His teachers don't know how to reach him. But Emily does. She follows him into the impossible-a journey through the landscapes of his mind, facing not only his deepest wounds but her own. To bring him back, she'll have to confront everything she's spent her life running from: the fear of being alone, the weight of unspoken regret, and a desire so powerful it threatens to keep her trapped forever.
The Keeper of Light is a love story unlike any other-a novel about what happens when two ordinary people find themselves in an extraordinary situation, and discover that love isn't about fixing someone. It's about holding them while they put themselves back together.